TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Friday, August 20, 2004

9:04 PM
Posted by jodi rose

Maria from sydney/manchester and Dave from the phonebook outside Kiasma during the crazy evening when everyone was celebrating and happy.

ok so now maybe I have made enough space for the images, I can write an actual entry.
at m-bar in helsinki, opposite kiasma. having a hilarious evening, after conference today went to the u gallery for peter and adam's show - they gave a beautiful presentation about their work, projected onto folded paper in this really large four-pronged fishing rod kind of thing. decided I would like to stay in europe until transcultural mapping in riga at end of september - only slight problem of insolvency. have gathered an apartment in helsinki and one in the 5th largest town of hungary to stay in, and now working on the compensation part of the equation.
wandered over to kiasma for the northern lights concert - caught the last half hour, was not si intrigued or excited, am waiting for jacob to make his music with the sounds, I think they will be very beautiful and intriguing, based on our conversation in copenhagen.
anyway, hanging out in kiasma cafe met maria, who I knew very slightly in sydney years ago, and remembered mainly through her ex-boyfriends. she's now in manchester, invited me to their girls night when I'm next in the UK - she also knew fee and ben and dave from the phonebook - they do really cool animation on mobile phones, where you make your own stop frame animated characters and then play them as a movie on the phone. Esther also met them finally, and andrew and john at the rengo walk - it was a refereshing change from sitting in the lecture theatre, the embodied locative media experience. walking around the outside of media lab/uiah building and talking with the workshop participants about their experiences, watching the video rengo they made on the phones, it was a very immersive and engaging environmental experience.
then also at the kiasma cafe met julianne pierce who had inspired me at art school with VNS Matrix and the cyberfeministpunk manifesto. totally cool. and then Bronja who remembered my glebe island bridge piece from years ago, told me she has been telling people about it ever since. Helsinki is so great, you meet the coolest people everywhere!
now I am due to meet teri and andrew and go to the electronic music celebrity deathmatch laserzone.
but first the excellent news that makro lab and radioqualia both won huge prizes at isea - the president of finland was here, and many people couldn't get in because she had already entered the theatre - I was chatting to adam and marko totally oblivious that they had both just won this major prize - well I could see something was going on with Marko, a huge entourage of excited people but just thought it was due to his charm and artistic cred!
there you go. So now I am talking with him tomorrow about the makrolab work and also his record label of avant garde musicians from eastern europe; and then adam hyde from radioqualia about the radio astronomy project.
apparently I am going to be the grilli romanci reporter tomorrow night, talking to people in grilli's about their greasiest romantic experience.!!!